The figure-skating of Julia, and the manner in which the secular world has chosen to

The figure-skating of Julia, and the manner in which the secular world has chosen to receive it (and how that secular world will learn to accept it):

When man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When man dies, he is hard and insensitive. Yet we see all of this in Julia, a 15-year old. And we see this in the figure-skating of Julia. As a conglomeration of those characteristics mentioned, the figure-skating of Julia is rejecting the idea of relativism in relation to truth— as those disparate characteristics are wont to do when individually isolated by themselves. You see, our cognitive environment is supersaturated with the unmet desire for approval. Provide a nucleation site, and it crystallizes into factions. Hence, ideas only gain mimetic momentum when they offer a narrative or *affective* armature for previously inchoate arguments. Take for instance, the I-spin of Julia—it is very peculiar to and from all the other female figure skaters because it seems like her ankle is dislocated while she is spinning. In this motion, Julia shows us that she recognizes the wolf of prejudice in the sheep's clothing of "tolerance" or "diversity". What parades as broadmindedness is in reality the bigotry that does not consider an adversary to be worth engaging. Of course this is a contradiction within the context of a figure skating competition, let alone a competitive female figure skater in that very figure skating competition, for she out there alone on the ice, giving her performance outside of the participants within; but for Julia, it is a paradox—something that is apt and, more importantly, just. For this insight alone, Julia will have a heads-up over all the others on the world stage of the Olympic. And we cannot chastise Julia for this, as we cannot chastise her for weaving a narrative nor building up an affective armature during “Schindler’s List”. For some in the figure skating community have decried the figure-skating of Julia as being "too cold" or "lacking expression and/or projection" or “lacking assertiveness in movement due to immaturity” or “hasn’t as yet developed a reputation” to garner quantifiable merit from the judges, yet they are the same ones who tend to conjure up relativism to bring death to a healthy argument: if truth is not something upon which minds can meet, why discuss anything? It is also intellectually dishonest. When someone says, "That may be true for you...", what they really mean is that it is not true at all (or they would affirm it) and that if you think it is true there is no point in even discussing the matter. In other words, what they really prefer foremost is artifice and superficiality-- in figure skating and, of course, in things outside of figure skating. When she is out there on the ice, Julia is, first and foremost, truth. For whenever Julia is out there on the ice, she never fails to affirm a principle that is fundamental to logical thought: contradictory positions—physical, analytical, dialectical or otherwise—demand resolution. Thereby, from truth, Julia always stresses the whole in her figure skating programs. There is always a feeling, from the audience’s perspective especially, that every particular element of hers interpenetrates the whole: a Proustian surfeit of sensory detail, if you will; and, like Edith Wharton (to make yet another literary analogy), Julia works by precisely detailing the trains of thought of her characters (in her movements). However, unlike Wharton, Julia obviously achieves this effect on the ice, and with one central character rather a small circle of central characters. So there is discernible this ethereal quality and truth and balance in pubescent/post-pubescent figure skaters, like Julia, contending against our otherwise muddled-up secular society in general—they had the nerve proper to their excesses and we have only the caution proper to ours.

Our Julia’s childish days are now all gone. A woman’s passion glows within her breast, though as yet she has not scanned it with a woman’s intelligence. It was doomed that the child should return no more; but in lieu of her, a fair, heart-laden pubescent, whose every fondest thought must henceforth be of a stranger’s welfare and a stranger’s fate. We can’t help but forgive her more. I am sure there are some out there who believes Julia’s performance to “Schindler’s List” is just the definition of Hegel’s concept of “the Unhappy Consciousness”. To clarify: Hegel had this idea of different stages of consciousness, and this particular stage is not the most advanced, it is one-sided and ultimately needs to be transcended. Alas, how many of us from week to week call ourselves worms and dust and miserable sinners, describe ourselves as chaff for the winds, weeds for the burning, as dirt and filth fit only to be trodden under foot, and yet in all our doings before the world cannot bring home to ourselves the conviction that we require other guidance than our own! For it is no surprise that Julia has read Kierkegaard (and I am a little sad she has never got around to learning that Kierkegaard is a philosophee gateway, and not something to latch onto as a statement of “how things are”). That stage of consciousness has its share of truth, despite it being undeveloped. It is especially easy to feel this when Julia is figure-skating. Julia who felt that she was still loved as a child, but that she was loved from a feeling of uncalled-for gratitude. She who could not stop to analyze this, to separate the sweet from the bitter; but she knew that the latter prevailed. It is so little flattering to be loved when such love is the offspring of gratitude. And then when that gratitude is unnecessary, when it has been given in mistake for supposed favors, the acceptance of such love is little better than a cheat. Dear Julia, who will not love you for such endeavor? But, indeed, the reward for heroism may cometh not here in this world, neither in this place nor at this time.

Our Julia’s childish days are now all gone. A woman’s passion glows within her breast, though as yet she has not scanned it with a woman’s intelligence. It was doomed that the child should return no more; but in lieu of her, a fair, heart-laden pubescent, whose every fondest thought must henceforth be of a stranger’s welfare and a stranger’s fate. We can’t help but forgive her more. I am sure there are some out there who believes Julia’s performance to “Schindler’s List” is just the definition of Hegel’s concept of “the Unhappy Consciousness”. To clarify: Hegel had this idea of different stages of consciousness, and this particular stage is not the most advanced, it is one-sided and ultimately needs to be transcended. Alas, how many of us from week to week call ourselves worms and dust and miserable sinners, describe ourselves as chaff for the winds, weeds for the burning, as dirt and filth fit only to be trodden under foot, and yet in all our doings before the world cannot bring home to ourselves the conviction that we require other guidance than our own! For it is no surprise that Julia has read Kierkegaard (and I am a little sad she has never got around to learning that Kierkegaard is a philosophee gateway, and not something to latch onto as a statement of “how things are”). That stage of consciousness has its share of truth, despite it being undeveloped. It is especially easy to feel this when Julia is figure-skating. Julia who felt that she was still loved as a child, but that she was loved from a feeling of uncalled-for gratitude. She who could not stop to analyze this, to separate the sweet from the bitter; but she knew that the latter prevailed. It is so little flattering to be loved when such love is the offspring of gratitude. And then when that gratitude is unnecessary, when it has been given in mistake for supposed favors, the acceptance of such love is little better than a cheat. Dear Julia, who will not love you for such endeavor? But, indeed, the reward for heroism may cometh not here in this world, neither in this place nor at this time.